Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Detecting nuclear – electromagnetic – or ultrasonic radiation
Reexamination Certificate
1999-10-22
2002-12-31
Lateef, Marvin M. (Department: 3737)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Detecting nuclear, electromagnetic, or ultrasonic radiation
C600S443000, C128S916000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06500118
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image memory technique for easily achieving many varieties of three-dimensional image analyses under arbitrary display conditions for volume data obtained in the past, by storing an obtained volume data in a loop memory in time series in a real-time three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus for carrying out an acquisition and display of the volume data in real time.
2. Description of the Background Art
A two-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus conventionally utilized employs a system for displaying a tomographic image obtained by scanning one tomographic plane by an ultrasonic wave beam. In the mean time, in recent years, there have been carried out various trials of three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnosis for obtaining three-dimensional image data (that is, volume data) by acquiring diagnostic images while moving an ultrasonic probe that is an ultrasonic transceiver in a three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus. Thus, there has been placed a large expectation in a potential of a new diagnosis based on a three-dimensional image in this three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus. More particularly, researches have been progressed which is concerning the use of a manually or mechanically moving a convex probe or a linear-arrayed probe for abdomen or a multi-plane probe through esophagus having a function of rotating an electronic sector probe.
Particularly, there have recently been progressed researches and developments on a real-time three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus for acquiring and displaying three-dimensional information in real time, by electronically carrying out a three-dimensional scanning by ultrasonic waves at high speed. In other words, this real-time three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus is an apparatus for sequentially displaying volume data that is three-dimensional image data acquired.
The above-described three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, however, has the following problems.
This real-time three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus is still at a research stage, and fundamentals including a detailed method of achieving this apparatus or utilizing the apparatus have not yet been established.
According to the above-described two-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, as tomographic image data acquired by ultrasonic waves is simply displayed as a two-dimensional image, the tomographic image displayed and the acquired data basically correspond to each other at 1 to 1. Therefore, by merely storing the acquired image data itself on the image memory, it is easy to analyze the past data of image displayed in the past, by displaying of this past data again.
In this conventional two-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, the past image is an image data itself acquired in the past. For example, although there has been a technique for separately storing a plurality of kinds of images such as B mode images, Doppler images like CFM, M mode images, etc., these kinds of images are basically two-dimensional image data respectively. Therefore, there has never been a case of displaying images quite different from the images displayed in the past.
As a technique that can be used for storing the above-described past record of image data, there is available a cine-memory replay technique. This cine-memory is a loop-structured memory (loop memory) for storing data arranged in time array by sequentially updating the data at prescribed time intervals. This technique is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. Hei 3-210247.
On the other hand, according to the above-described three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, it is not possible to display all the acquired three-dimensional image data (hereinafter to be referred to as volume data) on an image display unit (a cathode-ray tube, CRT). Therefore, it is necessary to image-process these volume data and display the processed result on a two-dimensional CRT as a three-dimensional display image. In other words, as compared with the two-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, the conventional three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, particularly the real-time three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus for scanning ultrasonic image information three-dimensionally at high speed as not an acquisition of tomogpraphic images but as one volume data, and displaying the scanned result by sequentially processing the images, has a characteristic that the three-dimensional image data acquired by ultrasonic waves does not correspond to the displayed three-dimensional image data at 1 to 1.
Therefore, the above-described three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus has a problem that it is possible to display only limited three-dimensional data when only the displayed three-dimensional image data is used as the past image. The above-described memory for storing only the displayed image data has not been sufficient for a three-dimensional ultrasonic system.
Further, generally, at the time of carrying out an ultrasonic diagnosis, an image is displayed by always changing display conditions of the image in order to perform an optimum analysis of the image displayed.
Therefore, particularly in the case of observing a moving tissue such as a blood stream of a subject (that is, human body under examination), or in the case of observing a display image by moving it, the conventional three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus has a problem that it requires a frequent complex operation for adjusting display conditions each time an image displayed in the past is replayed, making it difficult to replay the past images.
In other words, a method of displaying a three-dimensional image with respect to three-dimensional image data is theoretically limitless. It has, therefore, been required to obtain a new technique for achieving a function of replaying a past image from the viewpoint of display conditions of identifying an angle and conditions from which an object to be diagnosed is observed as a three-dimensional image.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problems of the conventional technique. It is an object of the present invention to provide a three-dimensional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus capable of displaying past three-dimensional display images retroactively to a prescribed past time, by keeping a record of volume data in a memory system of a loop memory (cine-memory) structure that stores data of time- series array by sequentially updating the data at prescribed time intervals.
Further, it is another object of the present invention to achieve a replay of a past three-dimensional display image can be achieved in an easy operation, by storing in the loop memory display conditions of the three-dimensional display image formed from the stored volume data. It may be so structured that a display condition of the past three-dimensional display image can be arbitrarily selected according to the need of desired analysis, from among a display condition based on the past display and a currently-set display condition.
Therefore, it is possible to carry out in an easy operation various three-dimensional image analyses retroactively to the past images based on the past volume data record. Furthermore, it is possible to carry out a three-dimensional image analysis at high speed and in high precision.
According to one aspect of the present invention, as shown in
FIG. 1
, there is provided an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, comprising:
a three-dimensional scanner (
1
,
2
,
3
) for carrying out a three-dimensional scanning by ultrasonic waves; a three-dimensional image data former
4
for forming three-dimensional image data based on scanning data obtained from the three-dimensional scanner; a three-dimensional image data memory
5
for storing in time
Imam Ali M.
Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
Lateef Marvin M.
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